After the Alaska purchase, the Navy took control of the newly established Department of Alaska in 1879. The Native people who lived in this region of the U.S were the Tlingit and from the start there was a lot of tension between the new settlers and the indigenous people of the area. Because of differences in the way they saw how things should be carried out, especially legal-wise, the two bands were not able to settle things peacefully. From 1869 tension began to escalate and two major conflicts ensued, which affected Tlingit villages. The first was the Kake War, in February of 1869, that affected the Sitka village, as well as others, near what is present day Kake. Then, in December of the same year, there was a bombardment on the part of the U.S Navy to the Stikine village of Old Wrangell. This led to a conflict in which several Stikine villages were affected. Then, on October 1882, the biggest problem ensued and it affected the Tlingit village of Angoon, when the U.S Navy under commander Edgar C. Merriman bombarded the settlement because they had taken hostages and property in return for blankets.
"On July 17, 1897, the steamship Portland arrived in Seattle from Alaska with 68 miners and a cargo of “more than a ton of solid gold” from the banks of the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory."
